I have given Jenna “Fucking” Lyons a lot of leeway about not showing parts of her life on this here reality television program because I love her, I think she elevates the show, and I think she is actually a great Housewife despite the fact that she’s as open as the DMV at midnight. But after watching her stoop sale, I think it’s gone too far. I get it. Jenna doesn’t want her relationship on the show, and she has plenty of other things to talk about — her business, her son going off to college, her relationships with the other women — that have nothing to do with her relationship status. But it seems like her unwillingness to show (or even talk about) her personal life is getting in the way of the story.
It’s most evident when the show finally gets around to Jenna’s stoop sale, which was covered by the New York Times and our sisters in struggle over at The Cut. It was a major event, and it seems like the show should cover it the best, with the most insight, and maybe even have a few of the other ladies stop by. But we didn’t get any of that. Jenna talked about how hard it is for her to get rid of some of the things in her closet and obliquely references that she basically needs to make more closet space for her girlfriend to move in. Okay, so we’re getting the stoop sale, just like everyone else, but we’re not getting the relationship component. We’re not even getting Jenna talking directly, like, “My girlfriend said she needs room for her clothes, so now I’m doing this.” Bravo is paying Jenna a lot of money, and they got just as much as the NYT, which gave her nothing.
I was also shocked that no one could swing by to film with Jenna for a few minutes? Sai is a fashion person, and you would think she would kill to be there. Ubah and Racquel are the only two that are really Jenna’s size and could wear a lot of the clothes, so why weren’t they trying on the Beyoncé dress? Instead, this whole event is just a little aside, something that is on the show but not of the show, and that is my biggest problem with Jenna. When she commits to the bit (think her cell phone and lawsuits at Jessel’s Clueless party), she is the most fun of the whole cast, but so often, she’s hamstrung by her own restrictions. What really pissed me off was when a producer asked how much she made on the sale, and Jenna didn’t answer. Come on! We’ve seen it covered multiple places; give us something. “I made more than $5,000 but less than $50,000” would have been a completely acceptable answer. We don’t need to count every coin, but is a ballpark too much to ask? Apparently so.
I don’t need Jenna to get relatable by any means; I like her elevated, but stooping down, especially at her stoop sale, would be admirable. Speaking of not being at all relatable, what about Sai’s story about getting a giant piece of glass stuck in her foot that we’re treated to at the top of the episode? Let’s count the not-at-all-relatable things in this short story. Sai was in her Brooklyn brownstone (1) cleaning out her sample closet (2), which she calls Sai-Phora (3). She was getting rid of some old products (4), and some of them were in glass jars. She put the bags in her elevator (5), and they were falling out, so she karate-chopped them back into the elevator (6) and then got a shard of glass stuck in her foot that hit the bone. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that happens to everyone.
Sai’s injury made her miss Racq-Mel’s engagement party, but it was Erin who kind of missed the point of the party. She doesn’t know what the “ballroom” theme is, thinking it’s more like the ending of Beauty and the Beast. She doesn’t understand the dress code or why there are categories. It would all make total sense if Erin would just educate herself and watch Paris Is Burning, one of the greatest documentaries of the last 50 years. It’s only 87 minutes! That’s shorter than most podcasts. Racquel tells Erin she’s going to dress as “Grace,” and Erin thinks she means Grace Kelly. When Racquel tells her it is Grace Jones, Erin doesn’t know who that is. You should see the face I’m making right now. It’s a combination of “I hate this lady so much” and “What is that smell?”
The party was the highlight of the episode, and the outfits were the highlight of the party, so let’s rank them starting with the worst.
6. Brynn: She’s in a white, sequin gown with a gold cape over it. Yes, one of the categories was “Glitterific,” but this is just what Brynn wears. This could be any party. She’s not doing anything original, nor is she outside of her comfort zone. Chop!
5. Jessel and Pavit: Entering the “Night of a Thousand Madonnas” category, Jessel comes dressed as “Material Girl” era Madge and absolutely kills it. The reason she’s at the bottom is it was too much of a costume. How about Madonna-inspired instead of flat-out Madonna? Also, if you’re doing Madonna at a vogueing-themed party, wouldn’t you go with a more ‘90s version? Pavit totally nailed it when he showed up in a Versace-print silk shirt, giving total ‘90s Miami Nightclub Homosexual. If Jessel’s outfit was just 10 years later, they might have won.
4. Ubah: She’s glittery too in a silver gown that is slit down to her belly button, a bright red wig that goes all the way down to her ass, and embellished sunglasses that are giving Lady Gaga 1.0. She loses some points for wearing a bra she then had to disentangle herself from mid-party at Jenna’s suggestion.
3. Erin and Abe: Giving “Opposites Attract,” Erin and Abe (a.k.a. Gabe, a.k.a. Gay Abe) came dressed as each other. This is an excellent idea, and I give Abe major probs for being a straight(ish) guy who dressed in drag on a national television program, which takes a comfortability with both his gender expression and sexual orientation that many in his position would lack. That Erin went along with this (and obviously made herself the hotter of the two) is perhaps my favorite thing about her. However, Abe’s note stands: he should have worn something sexier.
2. Jenna: As always, she understood the assignment and it’s tens across the board. The idea was to dress as something that you aren’t, to try on a new persona, and Jenna opted for, well, she opted for Brynn’s. She’s in a tight, white, sequined gown with her boobs on full display. A shockingly feminine long white wig and long pink nails that she licked seductively when she arrived. She even wore a fake butt. (The best part of the whole episode is when she tells everyone that it’s all fake, and Jessel says, “Welcome to being a chick. None of it is real!”) But when Jenna turned up all in white and hugged Racquel in all black with a Grace Jones hood, I was hoping that they could be the Emma Frost and Selene in an all-lesbian version of the Hellfire Club. (That one was for the X-Men girlies.)
1. Racq-Mel: They have to win, it’s their party. Like always, I have such a crush on Mel with her butch vest, tattoo sleeve, and hair in cornrows. Racquel, however, really won the night, looking slinky and perfect in her Grace Jones-inspired black hooded gown. Dorit Kemsley’s last reunion dress wishes. Not to keep comparing Housewives, but Racquel arrived wearing the heart-shaped YSL coat that Bronwyn Newport on RHOSLC said there were only three of in the world. So which one was this? Was it Bronwyn’s? Was it Rihanna’s? Was it the one that is in the museum? I bet none of them. (I know we all love Bronwyn right now, but I’m ready to fast forward to her second season, where we realize that she’s a little bit more full of shit than we think she is right now.)
After the engagement party, we get a great scene of Brynn talking to her ghostwriter about how her self-help book slash memoir is going to work. Brynn mostly talks about how she survived a sexual assault and how that has affected her life. It sounds like it was fairly recent, and it makes everything she’s been going through with Gideon, getting married, having children, and dating make a whole lot more sense. We don’t get many details from Brynn, but I don’t think we need that to see the impact of what it has done to her life, and, as she was explaining this, I was getting lightbulb after lightbulb about how her behavior now makes a lot more sense, like this was the piece of the puzzle that we were missing. I’m still not buying the book, but the insight was invaluable.
The end of the episode is all about something that is brewing between Ubah and Erin, some kind of fight that is based on either nothing or maybe everything. Just like we have the “vibe-cession” I think that this is a “vibe-flict.” Like what are they even fighting about? Who knows? Vibes.
Erin has been going around saying that Ubah is coming for her, but, well, it does seem like Ubah is coming for her. She is talking about how Erin is a liar and a gaslighter. She made a huge point about how Erin doesn’t have any secrets about her at dodgeball, and then she sent that text to Erin where it says that she and Erin aren’t friends and she doesn’t know if Erin is real or putting it on for the show. (I would hope that if any of these women were putting it on for the show, we might have a better show.) So, yeah, it seems like Erin is right; Ubah is coming for her.
Ubah’s problem is that Erin is saying all of this but not saying it to her face. Also, Ubah says that she didn’t do anything to Erin to come for her, but I’m sorry, the evidence is to the contrary. (The Catholic Jesus wept; how am I on Erin Mew Mew Lichy’s side of an argument?) Ubah also says she doesn’t want to talk to Erin about this but isn’t that going against what Ubah is saying? If Ubah is mad that Erin is talking about her to the girls but not talking to Ubah, isn’t she doing the same, talking about Erin to the girls but not to Erin herself? This almost leads us to something interesting. Ubah says that when she talks to Erin, she is always going to twist something and won’t really listen. Sai says Erin is always listening but not understanding and that she seems to believe her own lies. Okay, but come out and say it! Give us examples. Get out those receipts. I can see that everything they’re saying is true; I can see the strife that is hiding just below the surface, like an eyeball that finally popped out of a corpse rotting in the Hudson that is about to startle us all. But they won’t. None of them will. They just keep it down, keep it diffuse, keep it vibes. Because if Jenna is not going to tell us how many Venmos she got at her stoop sale, then no one in her orbit will ever say anything of interest.
